Monday, January 19, 2009

Mom Says Grab a Tissue

Yes, that is Sister Garrett [See last photo in Hugs and Flying Dragon Kicks. Sister Garrett's sister happens to be the chorister in Elder Byrd's home ward]. The Clarks [who have family in the Jay branch which we attend when visiting the G-parents], she, and I are the only peeps representing the true south right now.

Oh yeah, The APs said I have to tell you that I will die July 2, that is my group is scheduled to fly home then. The irony would be that I would probably get set apart to normal on Independence Day. Bah. Bah upon it.

So anyways, this week was exiting in an everything exploded kind of way. But a lot of it involved disciplinary interviews so I guess a lot of it gets left at that. Speaking of divorce, went running around keeping one of my closest homies from doing such this week. Elder Andersen and I went running around playing peace maker, and after getting both sides to talk without the other knowing, we found out that they both wanted the exact same thing but had gotten so mad and stuck on dumb little things that she (he) thought he (she) hated her (him); and they both have a fiery side that would make anyone in our family proud.

As far as Sarah goes, yeah, she's totally still my baga degüü [small sibling]. I've been meaning to call but I need to ask the mission president since it’s been so long between calls.

I have been working at church a lot lately. It's kind of cool because I’ve had many unexpected teaching moments. I related a story that touched one guy so much that he used it in his sacrament talk and it touched even more people. It was about an almost dead puppy I found and nursed back to health (on the coldest day of last winter). We couldn't get in any houses and then there was this little dude stuck on the road. I put him in my jacket and drug him around with me all day, warmed him up and I fed him a little. That night we had a family home evening at a church member’s house. We went in and put the little dude by the fire, and the family said they would take care of him. It is important to note that this was a very popular breed of dog, and a male, which is hard to find for free. We left thinking the puppy would be alright, but when we came back the next day it was cast out dead on the trash pile. At first we thought it had died at night, but the family said the idea of having to take care of it before it could take care of itself sounded too annoying so they chucked it. There's a lot more to it but that’s the gist of it.

In his talk, added that we do that to people, even new members.

Sometimes I think many things I do don't matter and then I find out a month (or months) later that it impacted someone. For Example this Wednesday Ochiroo, the local administrator of the Light Center Orphanage, became an investigator after six freaking months of working our booties off there. I was talking to him about when he first started coming to church, and he said that a little over a year ago he came to see if he could get some aid from Deseret Charities, which he did, but he never came to church. He popped in when he needed stuff, but never came on Sunday. Then seven months later Naisbitt and I go out there every day for a week and work like slaves for a meal. The job would have taken him at least two months to finish alone. He said because of that he has been coming to church ever since, and then us coming out and working to build a small building out of nothing but rough hewn stone and gravity (in -25 weather) touched him even more. But that’s . . . whatever, these little orphan farts are the cutest things in the world. While we're working on the walls, the branch missionaries had mostly given up on working, so we just hammer it out much slower on our own. The little orphan monkeys notice this and start fumbling around with rocks the size of their torsos and dragged/pushed/heaved/etc them over toward us. They are such little studs. We told Ochiroo to start bringing them all over to primary.

I was looking at my work right now. In a billion investigators and referrals way, it's kinda . . . whatever. But we have these five families we’re focusing on, that’s the most of my whole mission. That’s sweet.

Transfer calls are next Sunday. I really *REALLY* don’t want to go, but I'll serve were I’m needed.